Superwomen of Eva: Legacies: Batgirl Beyond
by Cyclone
Summary: Instinct. That's... who you are.
1. Issue 1

**Superwomen of Eva: Legacies**  
_Batgirl Beyond #1_

The man descended into Nerv with a purpose. A pleasant smile was fixed on his face, but it was easy to see the steel behind it as he navigated the Nerv complex with the self-assurance of someone who knew the place like the back of his hand.

Finally, he limped to his destination, the doors to the Nerv commander's office opening before him. At his desk, Ikari Gendo looked up.

"Commander Ikari," the man greeted airily.

"Mister Wayne," Gendo returned the greeting. "What brings you to Nerv today?"

"Nerv is spending an awful lot of my money," Bruce Wayne said, his voice deceptively light. "After some... rather ugly rumors I heard involving Unit Zero's activation, I decided to have a look at my investment."

Gendo wasn't fooled. One did not accomplish the things Bruce Wayne had in the wake of Second Impact by being as naive or foolish as Wayne's reputation painted him. The fact that he knew about the failed activation test quickly enough to fly in from Gotham so soon...

In truth, Bruce Wayne terrified him.

"The situation is well under control, Mister Wayne," Gendo assured him. "The unfortunate failure of Unit Zero's activation is an isolated incident. It won't go berserk again."

"But if it does, have you got a back up?"

"Unit One can serve as back up until Unit Zero is online again."

"And... what about pilots?" Bruce asked mildly. "As I understand it, Soryu's still in Germany with Unit Two."

"That is correct."

"Leaving them both without support. Do you have someone who will be able to pilot Unit One once Unit Zero is back online? Do you have a contingency in case something happens to incapacitate Ayanami or Soryu?"

"No. There is no one else who can pilot Evangelion, Mister Wayne."

Bruce's eyes narrowed, and his expressed hardened, all traces of naive buffoon and even the savvy businessman washed away like paint. The room, as dimly lit as it was, seemed to grow darker.

"I find that hard to believe," he declared, leaning over Gendo's desk. It suddenly occurred to Gendo that there were probably at least a dozen different weapons that could be hidden in the old man's cane. "You're telling me that, out of three billion people, only two can pilot an Eva, and you're telling me this despite the fact that three have already been completed, and funding has been set aside for at least ten more.

"There are other pilots, Ikari, but you don't want them involved. Maybe you're protecting them, maybe you hate their guts, or maybe they just smell bad. Whatever your reasons, they don't matter anymore. You know as well as I do that the Angels will be here soon, and if something happens to Ayanami or you send her out there without back up, there's a good chance we might all die. So I'm going to ask you again: Is there someone else out there who can pilot Unit One?"

"...Yes."

Bruce leaned back again and smiled. The darkness suddenly seemed much less oppressive. "Good," he said cheerfully. "Get them over here so that they can start training right away. Wayne Enterprises will of course be happy to cover any expenses."

"Of course," Gendo said, resisting the urge to clench his fists in frustration.

"Thank you for your time, Commander Ikari. I have to say, I hope our future meetings are as productive as this one."

"'Future meetings,' Mister Wayne?"

"I'm moving to Tokyo-3 to oversee my corporate office here personally." He gave a disarming grin. "After all, when the giant monsters attack, where better to live than with our protectors?"

* * *

Bruce carefully made his way back to his limousine, then pushed the intercom that allowed him to communicate with his driver from the otherwise soundproof passenger compartment.

"Back to the tower, please," he said, his voice pleasant.

"Of course, Mister Wayne," his driver acknowledged.

He missed Alfred, but he'd long ago accepted the loss and moved on. He doubted he would ever trust anyone the way he trusted Alfred, but he had made the necessary adjustments to work around that.

He picked up the car phone and dialed a number from memory.

"Hello?" The voice that answered was achingly familiar.

"Diana," he said. "It's Bruce."

"Bruce," her voice warmed, "it's good to hear from you again. How have you been?"

"Surviving," he replied, squelching the emotions that her voice invoked. "This line is secure, right?"

He got a sigh in response. "Business, then. Yes, it's secure."

"Good. I'm concerned about Nerv," he said. "There's something fishy going on. I'd like to get someone on the inside, and I think I can swing a combat instructor position for you."

"Anything for you, Bruce."

"Thank you, Diana. You still going by Prince?"

"How did you-?" She broke off, then answered, "Yes, I am."

"Good. I'll have one of my assistants draw up the papers. When can you get here?"

"Give me a couple of weeks," she said. "And Bruce?"

"Yes?"

"It's good to hear your voice."

"...same here."

* * *

Just a few days later, Bruce felt the briefest hint of regret over his choice to temporarily move the corporate headquarters to the Tokyo-3 offices. The wail of the warning sirens pierced the afternoon air and drew him and his limo driver into the nearest shelter.

Tokyo-3 had been built as a fortress city, with enough shelters buried within and beneath the twenty-two layers of alloy plate armor to comfortably fit its projected population, with the extensive network of catacombs to provide a buffer of additional shelter. Unfortunately, those projections had fallen short, as the city's population had boomed, people drawn to Tokyo-3 not only by the economy revitalized by Nerv's presence, but also by the sense of safety of having the world's protectors headquartered there and, in a sense, by the shelters themselves.

Bruce knew the catacombs well, having extensively studied their layout - their real layout, rather than the ones on file in city hall - years prior, even as they were being laid down. He knew what they looked like and where they led, but even he was unprepared for what they would be like under these conditions. The shelter itself was packed to its safe capacity - fully twice as many people as it was intended for - and people still spilled out into the less-protected catacombs outside, huddling by the shelter door.

It was hot and stuffy, partially because of the enclosed space and partially because of the people who had crowded into the tunnels. The smell also wasn't helped by the semi-open air sewers in a large portion of the catacombs, which while normally just an odd design choice on most days had turned into everything short of an immediate health risk with the people crammed on top of the grates. It was disgusting, but ultimately bearable, and Bruce knew that under the other circumstances that were possible, this wasn't that bad.

They were in there for hours, the people's faces a mix of fear and boredom. At some points, some people swore that they could feel rumbling off in the distance, but for the most part, nothing happened. Then, anticlimactically, the all-clear signal sounded, and people started moving out of the catacombs, the shelter doors opening behind them.

For his part, Bruce was left slightly more uneasy than when he had started the day. He had dedicated himself to being the best CEO he could for his company, because that was what it seemed the world needed to rebuild. But as he looked out on the faces of the citizens of Tokyo-3 that day, he couldn't help feeling that what the world really needed was a hero.

* * *

"Next time I'm going to have to predict a snow day," Bruce said aloud.

"Sir?" his assistant for the day asked.

"Nothing," he answered. "Just talking to myself. Anything else for today?"

"No, sir."

"Very well; you're dismissed then."

As his assistant left, Bruce turned his attention back to the newspaper in his hands. It was the English version of the Daily Planet, electronically transmitted from Metropolis and printed for the newsstands of Tokyo-3, primarily for the city's American expat population, but also popular with the rest of the city's multilingual residents; the Planet still had a reputation for honest, hard-hitting reporting. None of this was any importance to Bruce today, not when compared to the front page story.

The front page story was penned by Lois Lane and featured the striking photograph of a young heroine they had taken to calling Supergirl holding the nose of a cargo plane above her head as she gently lowered it to the ground. It was something he hadn't seen in almost fifteen years, something he thought he'd never see again... and something he sorely wished Clark had been alive to see.

The fact that the story was penned by Lois Lane was almost certainly not a coincidence. The fact that this new Kryptonian on the block seemed to look Japanese was almost certainly no accident. The fact that this had happened so soon after the Angel attack was almost certainly part of something big. Yet, for all that, Bruce had to admit that it was almost certainly just one more mystery among many in Tokyo-3.

So, for the moment, he just resigned himself to his lack of information. As soon as the sun went down, though, that would all change. It might not change fast, but it would change.

* * *

Kirishima Mana carried another stack of boxes into their new apartment in Tokyo-3. She set it down, leaning on the boxes, and brushed her hair out of her eyes. She wasn't really feeling the strain - she was a lot stronger than she looked - but they had been at this for hours.

"I cannot seriously believe we really had to bring this much junk," she muttered, glowering unhappily.

Her "aunt" - better known to Mana as Sergeant Lisa Yurigama - chuckled as she set down her own burden. "Now, now, Mana dear, most girls your age would _love_ to have such a varied wardrobe."

Mana bit back a retort that might blow their cover and settled for rolling her eyes. "Yes, auntie."

Their mission was classified at the highest levels. They couldn't even speak of it outside a lead-lined, soundproofed Faraday cage for fear that someone - like Tokyo-3's newest celebrity - might learn of it.

Because when your target may have a Kryptonian on staff, maximum paranoia may be the only way to stay alive.

"Now, I've got an appointment with the principal this afternoon," Lisa said. "Hopefully, you'll be able to start at your new school as early as tomorrow, before I leave for the UN base."

"Yes, auntie," Mana acknowledged with a nod. Nerv was hardly their only suspect when it came to the question of who might clone themselves a Kryptonian, after all.

* * *

Mana looked up at the sign above the door. 2-A. This was where she was supposed to be. She squared her shoulders, hefted her bookbag... then thought better of it and forced herself into a slouch before walking in.

She surreptitiously scanned the classroom, matching faces to the dossiers she had studied. It hadn't taken much of a bribe to get her into the same class as the pilots, but one of the more interesting things she had noted when reviewing her classmates' information was the fact that none of their mothers were alive.

Once was happenstance; twice was coincidence; three times was enemy action. As far she was concerned, thirty times meant a conspiracy. If only she could figure out the purpose of it.

* * *

Mana had formulated and discarded a number of possible courses of action. Between the two pilots, the better one to approach would obviously be Ayanami, as she was the veteran pilot and reportedly the one responsible for killing the Third Angel. The problem lay in Ayanami's withdrawn nature.

_Screw it,_ she thought as they broke for lunch. _There's something to be said for the direct approach._ She pushed herself to her feet and marched over to the bluenette.

"Hi!" she said cheerfully, offering a hand, Western-style. "My name's Kirishima Mana! Let's be good friends!"

Ayanami blinked and looked up from her book. "Why?"

Mana cocked her head to consider that question. "Well... because I'm new in town, and you looked lonely."

"I prefer to be alone."

"Oh," Mana said. "Sorry to bother you then," she said, letting her shoulders slump and turning away. Had anyone looking at her been older than fourteen - or, at least, been as singularly beyond their years as she - they might have noticed the calculating look cross her face as she spied the other pilot. With a show of gathering her courage, she headed for him.

"Hi! My name is Kirishima Mana! Let's be good friends!" she repeated.

Next to her target, another boy dressed in non-regulation clothing - a tracksuit - guffawed, gave Ikari a backslap and said, "Hey, Shinji, looks like that back up position is paying off. You've already got babes crawling all over you."

Mana took a moment to identify the boy: Suzuhara Toji, born December 26, 2001, in Sakai, Osaka prefecture. Known affiliations: track team. Academic record: below average to average. Relations: younger sister, Suzuhara Sakura; mother, Suzuhara Reiko, deceased; father, Suzuhara Ryu, currently employed by LexCorp as a low-clearance security guard. The facts flashed through her mind in an instant; she had been provided full dossiers on the entire class, and she had learned at a very young age to memorize and recall information rapidly. The other boy with Ikari was identified just as quickly as Aida Kensuke, a member of the A/V Club, along with the assorted associated data.

"Toji!" Ikari replied, looking positively scandalized. "She's probably just trying to be nice."

Mana could go with that. "Kind of. I just moved here, and I heard you did too. Since I don't have any friends here yet, I figure we transfer students ought to stick together."

Ikari smiled and shook her proferred hand. "I'd like that."

* * *

Mana sighed as she doodled, sitting at the kitchen counter of the apartment. It had been a week since she officially transferred in and made contact with the pilots, and she was no closer to completing her mission than when she had started. Ayanami remained aloof and unapproachable, even at Shinji's house warming party the day before, and she was now more convinced than ever that Shinji knew nothing about Nerv's plans.

In fact, it was entirely possible he knew less about Nerv than she did.

Still, it had been nice having friends. Even if it did mean fending off Toji's desultory advances and having to resist the alternating urges to correct Kensuke or interrogate him on his sources...

The door opened, and she smiled. "Auntie."

"Mana," Lisa greeted her. "So, how's San'yedo treating you?"

Mana rolled her eyes. "It's fine," she said. "I made a few friends, nothing special."

"So, how did that house warming party go?"

"It was... awkward," Mana said. "I can't seem to make friends with any girls my age."

Translation: No progress with the First Child.

"I see. Any plans?"

"Actually, I was thinking I might head out tonight, though, get a feel for the city, if that's okay?"

"Well," Lisa paused, considering the coded mission proposal, "don't stay out too late."

Mana beamed.

* * *

Covert intrusion was second nature to Mana, and penetrating the building's security was, for her, literally child's play. State of the art electronic surveillance, alarms, and locks could only do so much to cover human limitations and the complacency that inevitably set in.

In this, she was the ideal candidate. If she was caught, her superiors wouldn't even have to disavow her, as the JSSDF's involvement wouldn't even be suspected. After all, she was just a kid, obviously out for some thrills, a wannabe Catwoman with some talent.

She approached the door and rested a hand on the handle. If the information she was looking for was anywhere, it would most likely be in this particular office. She tried the door. Here, well past the layers of security, convenience had obviously won out, as the handle turned. The door swung open with barely a whisper, and she slipped in.

Instincts kept her in the shadows at the edges of the room, away from the large windows that lined the office's outer walls, as she approached the desk that dominated the room.

Suddenly, shutters slammed shut, sealing the room.

"Hello, Miss Kirishima. You're late."


	2. Issue 2

**Superwomen of Eva: Legacies**  
_Batgirl Beyond #2_

"Hello, Miss Kirishima. You're late."

Mana reacted instinctively, a small throwing blade practically leaping to her hand as she spun, and hurled it toward the voice. Her aim was true, but her target's reflexes proved superior. The shadowy figure deflected the blade with something in his hands.

Another blade found its way into her hand as she advanced... and stumbled to an uncertain halt. Ingrained instinct warred with memories she mentally recoiled from.

"I'm not here to fight you," a gravelly voice said. He stepped out of the shadows.

She scanned the interloper cautiously, noting the cane which he had used to deflect her blade. Recognition took a moment to sink in after the tactical assessment: This was none other than the owner of the building she had just broken into, Bruce Wayne.

_Crap._

Mr. Wayne stepped closer, eyes piercing. "Kirishima Mana, recent transfer student to Tokyo-Three First Municipal Middle School, Class 2-A. Officially a special consultant for the Japanese government, redacted record. Parents unknown, presumed dead. Legal guardian: Sergeant Lisa Yurigama, JSSDF, currently attached to the UN military liaison."

"It seems you have me at a disadvantage," she bit out.

"You know who I am; you broke into my building," he said, his voice hard. "Since you got this far, you're smart enough to have done your homework. The room's soundproofed. Your secrets are safe."

_For now,_ she thought warily. Every instinct she had screamed that Wayne was _dangerous_, as much physically as economically.

"You're here investigating Nerv," he declared.

"I'm looking for answers," she retorted.

He smiled.

"So am I."

* * *

"Well?"

"I found a few things of interest," Mana said, handing Lisa a USB stick. As always, for security reasons, they spoke either in very vague terms or in code. "Dunno if you'll care for any of it or not."

The intel Mr. Wayne had provided Mana with on condition of anonymity was information that she could have gotten on her own, but it would have taken her weeks - probably months - of surveillance.

There wasn't technically anything confidential in it, but it was far more than what could be found in the press releases: estimated shift schedules, common routes used by the personnel to get to and from Nerv, a fairly extensive roster of Nerv personnel, even a basic layout of much of the interior, though some areas remained blank. It was a veritable treasure trove of intel.

Or it would be, if proved to be accurate.

"Thanks," Lisa said, ruffling Mana's hair, causing the teenager to try and duck away. "I'll check it out."

Mana grinned. "You do that," she said. "I'm sure you'll have fun looking it over."

Ultimately, Mana didn't trust Mr. Wayne. He was clearly a man of many secrets. In the end, she understood the need for secrets, but that didn't make her any more willing to trust a man who had so many. Still, the analyst team they had access to would go over the data and verify how accurate it was.

That didn't mean she wasn't going to check on the intel herself personally.

* * *

The intel analysts would probably suggest a way to get into Nerv using the intel provided, but she knew that there was more than one way to skin a cat, as the Americans were so fond of saying. The main entrances would be well watched and/or guarded, of course, but there were always side routes. One did not simply just build a city like Tokyo-3 without connecting to the underground.

It was at the Tokyo-3 municipal records building that she found what she was looking for. Back there, amongst the dusty papers marked "Hakone," she examined the layout of the city to find clues on a way to get into Nerv. It was something done on her own free time, and she felt she could spare it.

Tokyo-3 was originally named Hakone, and it had just been a sleepy little rest stop for traders and hikers until the Japanese government came in in the 1930s and turned the place into a giant weapons factory complex. Then, again, in the '40s, the city was modified further to turn into a fortress; even the sewers were turned into a means of surviving attack. It was those sewers and the other parts of the catacombs that formed the focus of her search.

That search came to an end not with a dramatic reveal, but with a subtle imperfection. While comparing the modern schematic of a certain part of the city to a map of that same area from the 1950s, she found one of the tunnels to be straighter in the modern version then in the version from the '50s. It could simply have been an error on one of the maps that caused the discrepancy between the two, but...

Mana had found her destination. She could be the ant with the no chance of crawling in, but she didn't think so. There was something there; she just knew it.

* * *

Mana wiped the sweat that was starting to pool off her brow and looked at the wall in front of her. It was simple. She had found a discrepancy in the city plans in this section of the sewers. There were two possibilities: either there must be something here that someone was trying to keep secret, or simple inefficiency in the bureaucracy led to inaccurate records.

Looking at the wall at that moment, though, the child soldier was certainly considering the latter possibility. There was nothing there: no hidden button disguised as a brick, no microphones to pick up a verbal pass phrase, no cameras to be found, not even a hollow sound. It was just a plain old brick wall. Granted, the sheer size of the sewer was a bit odd, but in the Fortress City, it made sense to have a series of underground catacombs to hide the population in if the city was ever being bombed and the purpose-built shelters proved insufficient.

Still, there was something about this section of World War II-era wall that made her instincts flare up. There was something there, she knew it. All she needed was to find a way to unlock it.

A sudden thought struck her, and she looked down to the grate beneath her feet. She looked past the grate and into the ruddy water that flowed beneath it. Angling her flashlight to get a better look, she was suddenly very glad that she was wearing an old set of cheap clothes.

Letting out a brief whimper at what she was about to do, she stuck the flashlight in her mouth and placed her hands on the grate. She pulled with all of her might, and soon, the grate was free. With a long-suffering groan, she moved the grate out of the way and dropped it to the ground before grabbing the flashlight out of her mouth. Panting heavily, she stared at the now open sewer line and steeled herself for what she was about to do.

Getting down on her hands and knees, she adjusted the flashlight again to make sure what she had seen hadn't been a trick of the light, then braced herself one final time and plunged her hand down into the depths.

_Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it,_ she mentally chanted to herself as her hand fumbled around in what she was trying to convince herself was really humid air.

All of a sudden, her hand found purchase on something, and she pressed down. There was a brief hissing noise, and Mana yanked her arm out of the sewage and spun around to find herself looking at a wall that had parted to reveal a wide, metal tunnel. Her instincts had turned out to be right.

The redheaded Japanese girl briefly considered calling it in, but dismissed it after a few seconds. She didn't know how to close the door, and even if she did, whoever owned the door had likely been alerted by it opening. If she left now, the route would likely be sealed forever by the time she got back, and she wouldn't have anything to prove that it had ever been there in the first place. She hadn't come all this way just to be labeled a paranoid failure, so she was left with only one option.

She charged through the now open wall and into the new passageway. Almost as soon as she had passed the threshold, the gate closed behind her, and Mana realized in an instant how deep she had dug herself. Lights snapped on all along the corridor, and nozzles appeared from all angles. She had barely enough time to register them before they came online, spraying a fine mist into the now sealed tunnel.

Mana coughed as she inhaled some of the mist, while the rest of her body was soaked in chemicals.

_"Decontamination in progress. Decontamination in progress,"_ an artificial-sounding female voice announced over the speakers.

_Okay, that makes sense, but they almost certainly know I'm here now,_ Mana thought as the decontamination nozzles stopped spraying. Looking down the long tunnel, she realized that the only way out was forward, so she ran. As she ran, she was suddenly buffeted by strong and warm gusts of wind from inset fans. _And now I'm dry. Convenient,_ she mused as she ran down a large curve in the tunnel. _Is this a car tunnel?_

And then Mana finally rounded the curve to find something that almost made her stop in her tracks. There really was a car there, but it wasn't just any car. It seemed, as she slowed her pace and began glancing around the room in a semi-paranoid fashion, that if it was indeed a car, it had no wheels. No wheels meant that it was either in desperate need of repair, or it was anti-gravity vehicle. That almost made her stop completely. Even after decades of the technology being used by mad scientists, various alien invaders, and at least a few capes, it was still prohibitively expensive for one reason or another, usually tying back to maintenance. Nerv was the only real candidate with the resources to maintain an anti-gravity vehicle, but they weren't known to have them.

Whatever intelligence coup she had stumbled upon died in her mind, though, when she finally got a full look at the room, seeing things that she never expected to see, things that hadn't been seen since she had been born fourteen years ago, things _no one_ ever expected to see again. And just like that, she found herself walking further into the room.

"You are one stubborn young lady," Bruce Wayne said from behind her.

Mana whirled around to face him, a throwing knife coming to her hand just as it had not so long ago in a similar situation, and just like then, she lowered her weapon upon seeing that Mr. Wayne was far too close to fight. That didn't mean she couldn't talk though. "You're Batman." It really seemed like the only thing to say.

"I _was_ Batman," Bruce corrected. "What was your first clue?" Noting Mana relaxing slightly, he added, "That wasn't a rhetorical question."

Mana considered not answering, but decided that the answer was so simple and obvious that it wouldn't do any harm to reply. "The bat-themed hovercar."

"Cute," Bruce deadpanned. "So, how did you find this facility?"

"Why would I tell you that?" Mana asked.

"Because I'll find out, one way or the other. World's Greatest Detective, remember? This is just allowing you a chance to come clean."

"...it wasn't anything special. My mission here is to discover intel about Nerv, especially what connections they have to Supergirl, and that means eventually finding a way into the GeoFront. So I went to the city archives to research maps of the city. There's a discrepancy between maps of the catacombs dated during the Hakone era and those dated during the Tokyo-3 era after reconstruction. It's slight, but it is noticeable. It could have just been dismissed as part of the reconstruction, but my instincts told me something was here."

"Your instincts served you well," Bruce replied. "Have you told anyone else about this?"

Mana considered it for a moment, rolled it around in her head, then gave the only answer that felt right: the honest one. "No, and I don't intend to in the future. It doesn't matter if you were Batman in the past. Right here and now, you're an intel asset to me, and I'm not going to jeopardize our relationship by revealing private information unnecessarily."

"Your superiors are going to want to know this," Bruce reminded her.

"I didn't tell them that Bruce Wayne is one of my sources. Why would I tell them that Batman is?"

"I don't know," Bruce said dangerously. "Why would you tell them who Batman is? Why is a fourteen year old girl acting as a spy for the Japanese government? Who are you, really?"

Mana's voice was calm and practiced, like her reply. "I'm not authorized to tell you that."

Bruce's frown became slightly deeper. "So you're not just a spy. That's troubling."

"I never said that. I just said I wasn't authorized to tell you anything, and that's still true," Mana clarified, her body trained from years of lying to make it easy.

"Well, if that's the case, perhaps it will be a while before we have anything to discuss," Bruce shrugged before walking past Mana to sit at the computer.

"You still here?" he asked after two minutes of silence, interrupted only by the clacking of the keyboard.

"Why aren't you out there?" Mana asked simply.

Bruce paused momentarily before replying, "This world needs a Bruce Wayne more than it needs a Batman."

"I've read the reports. This city is filled with crime and corruption, and Nerv's either part of it or derelict in their duty to help the city. The cops aren't going to do anything. The only one who seems to be standing up and fighting is Supergirl," Mana turned around to face the back of Bruce's head, her voice growing in volume.

"Supergirl's a Kryptonian," Bruce pointed out.

"You're Batman," Mana replied.

Bruce's chair spun around to reveal that he was most displeased. "Why do you even care? You're a spy; you should be excited about your job being made easier by all the chaos."

"My job is to protect the Japanese people; that's what I've been told since the first day I can ever remember."

Bruce stared into her soul as a reply, and while she held it, by the fortieth second, even Mana had to admit that she was feeling uncomfortable. "I don't believe you," he said finally. "Just keep our relationship professional. I give you intel, you act on it, and together, we find out what Nerv is hiding."

"So that's it then?" Mana asked.

"Yes. Door's on the right," Bruce said with a gesture.

Mana followed his hand, and then started walking towards the offered door. She opened it to reveal an elevator. "I won't tell anyone," she said aloud.

"I know," Bruce replied, watching the young red head go. He stared at elevator for a moment to confirm that it was going up, and then went back to his work.

Or at least he tried to. As he moved his fingers across the keyboard, he found he couldn't actually type anything. The previous conversation swirled in his head, and he couldn't concentrate. So he needed a new conversation.

"Computer..." he stopped. Could he call Diana on this? No, that wasn't right. He needed to talk to someone outside the cape community. "Contact Commissioner Gordon."

The ringtone sounded twice, and then clicked.

"Hello, Bruce," the voice of a woman said at the end of the line.

"Hello, Barbara," Bruce replied warmly. "This is a secure line, so how's the city doing?"

"Good. Things have been pretty quiet recently. Some people at City Hall are even talking about overtaking Plano, Texas as the safest city in the Union. I don't know, though. I mean we're good, but I don't think we're that good," Commissioner Barbara Gordon answered just as warmly. "How about you, Bruce? I heard you moved out to Tokyo-3. It must be night over there."

"You heard right; I made the move just a few weeks ago."

"And not long after, the city is attacked by giant monsters. Why am I not surprised? Apart from that, though, what is the famous fortress city like?"

Bruce's face grew grim. "It's bad over here, Barbara. It might be as bad as Gotham was back in the bad old days, possibly even worse. Intergang is everywhere, the police are corrupt, the government is corrupt, and Nerv, the people that are supposed to be protecting the city, might just be corrupt too. They're certainly hiding something big."

"Bruce, you're not thinking about putting the cowl back on, are you? You know that if Batman appears in Tokyo-3 so soon after you've arrived that people are going to start connecting the dots," Barbara told him, her voice growing worried.

"I know, Barbara. I'm not planning to. I'm getting too old for it, but..." Bruce began.

"...but the world needs a Bat. I know," Barbara finished somberly. "Have you thought about handing off the mantle to someone else though? Taking on an apprentice or something? Trust your instincts, and I'm sure you'll find someone worthy to carry the mantle."

"I hadn't, but that doesn't sound like such a bad idea. I could use the help around here," Bruce realized, possible candidates already rolling around in his head.

"Typical Bruce. I suggest an ally, and you come out with a gofer... sorry, Bruce, someone got their cat stuck up a tree, and we need to get it down. Imagine that, a cat stuck up a tree in Gotham."

"Take care then. Those cats have some nasty claws," Bruce said with a smile.

"And you would know all about that, wouldn't you, Bruce?" Barbara replied before the line was cut.

Bruce sighed and took a look around the Batcave. It was empty, dark, alone, and somehow, that seemed a lot less satisfactory than it had just a few hours ago. Barbara was right, he realized, the world needed a Bat. The criminals of this city needed to feel fear, and the citizens needed to feel safe at night. He couldn't do it, but perhaps there was another.

He started work anew on the computer, and an hour later, he had gathered up a short list of candidates that he knew about. Next would be the research into more possible candidates from people he didn't know off the top of his head. First, though, he decided to go and take a look at how the city really was at night. Batman might have been too conspicuous, but he had more than one trick for staying unseen up his sleeve.

* * *

Mana stuffed her hands into her pockets and brought her head down slightly. Her outward appearance was that of a rebellious teenager, someone depressed about a problem of their own making but too stupid and proud to fix it. It was distressingly easy for her to fall into it, but it was still just a ruse.

Inside, her mind was awash with thoughts. Recent events trampled over each other in a blind stampede to get to the forefront of her mind, and like she had been trained, she organized and directed those thoughts into manageable lines. To other people, it was a strange sensation, but to her, it was natural, or as natural as it could be with a nervous system like hers.

She wouldn't be revealing anything, that was for sure, but it didn't change the fact that she was getting in deep. Even if she was following protocol, there would likely be consequences for her or her brothers if the SSDF found out what she had omitted about her source. So, logically, what she would have to do is make sure they never found out, the only question was how.

Mana was broken out of her thoughts by the sound of a trash can lid banging against asphalt. Her head whipped around to find the offending piece of metal moving slightly on the floor of a nearby alleyway. There was someone there, and they didn't want to be seen. After looking around to check the positions of everyone else on the street, the redheaded girl moved into the alley to investigate.

As she moved deeper into the narrow street, she heard harsh whispering, or what might have been an attempt at quiet talking.

"Hey, man, that's all I have," a nervous male voice said.

"A hundred yen? Who carries around just a hundred frakking yen?! How the frak am I supposed to get into Intergang with just a hundred yen?! Are you trying to get me killed?!" another male voice, this one far angrier and slightly mad, said.

"I'm sorry!" the first voice exclaimed.

"Oh, you're going to be," the second voice said with malice.

By now, Mana had moved to the corner just a meter from where the two voices were. She had taken out a small mirror and used it to look around the corner without exposing herself. Two males, one larger and younger than the other. The larger male was restraining the older male by the shirt collar and pressing him against the side of a brick building. The larger male was raising his fist to strike the older male. The older male was cringing. Both were distracted.

She wouldn't let the assailant follow through. She pocketed the mirror in its secured pouch, and launched herself around the corner. She ran quickly, covering the meter in less than a second, and then brought her foot around in a roundhouse kick straight to the assailant's right shin. Her steel-toed shoes combined with her own uncommon strength to cause a sickening crack and a pained scream due to a fractured or broken bone. The assailant dropped the victim, and she followed up the strike with punch to the torso right beneath the arm.

A can of mace dropped into her hand, and as the assailant turned around, she fired it straight into his eyes. He was on his knees by now, so she quickly stepped around to his back and hit him in the back of the head. He dropped like a sack of potatoes.

Mana looked at the victim that she had saved. He seemed a bit roughed up and was breathing heavily, but otherwise, he was fine.

"Thank you," he said breathlessly.

"Don't mention it," Mana replied.

The former victim nodded, and she simply walked away.

* * *

Bruce Wayne gave a faint smile at the sight of what Mana had done from his rooftop perch. She didn't have to save that man, she didn't even have to investigate, but she did all the same. She didn't know he was watching either, using binoculars and a laser microphone such as he was. Her actions spoke volumes about her character and showed that there was perhaps more to her than met the eye.

As he called the police on one of his burner phones, a plan began to form in his head.

* * *

Mana's eyelids rapidly separated at the sound of her bedroom's door opening and the light flooding into her room from the newly activated lights. Somewhat fortunately for her, it was someone she knew.

"Get up. There's someone here to see you," her guardian said curtly before closing the door.

Mana rushed to comply, her sleep-addled mind not helping her in that regard. It took her an unacceptable 30 seconds to get all of her clothes on for a school day. After completing it, though, she casually walked out of the room to meet whoever had come for her. When she saw who it was though, her heart practically stopped.

In front of her was Bruce Wayne, sitting on her couch like nothing was wrong. Why was he here? Why was he just acting like nothing was amiss? What could have possibly hoped to gain by coming to her place of residence that she shared with her SO?!

Mr. Wayne turned his head to face her with a smile on his face. "Ah, you must be Ms. Kirishima. We were just talking about you."

"Yes, Mr. Wayne was just about to explain why he was visiting," the tone was dry and expository, but Mana had been with Sgt. Yurigama long enough to know that she was in trouble.

"Indeed. You know, she saved one of my employees from a mugging last night," Bruce said chipperly, turning to face Sgt. Yurigama in the seat across from him.

"Did she now?" Mana really did not like her tone, but she kept her outer features cool and collected, lest the sergeant decide she didn't like _her_ tone.

"Yes. Came out of nowhere to help him and never asked for any sort of compensation. Well, I couldn't just let that stand, so I had some of my people track her down," Bruce then turned towards her. "You know that you're the only native Japanese girl in the whole city to have blood red hair?"

"I didn't really check," Mana replied earnestly. Though, in truth, she wasn't surprised. Certainly, there couldn't be very many - if any - in the country for whom that hair color was natural.

"Well, you are, and I came here to offer you a bit of financial compensation, along with something else."

Sgt. Yurigama's eyebrows raised just enough that they were able to be seen above her ever-present tinted spectacles. "And what would that be, Mr. Wayne?"

"My people have been after me of late, saying that I'm doing too much, yadda yadda, and that I'm going to need more full time help. Well, I'm not exactly just about to pick any old help after so long on my own," Mr. Wayne refocused on Mana and suddenly looked much more serious to her. "When you saved my employee out of your own free will, with no hope of compensation, you demonstrated the heroic qualities that this world, and Wayne Enterprises, needs more than ever. So, I'm prepared to offer you a job as my part-time assistant. Sort of a gofer; go for this, go for that. An _ally_, as it were."

"She accepts!" Sgt. Yurigama said suddenly.

"Auntie! I can handle this myself," Mana replied, easily slipping back into the cover that shielded her against the prying ears of any Kryptonian.

"What? It's a fantastic opportunity, and you're going to need somewhere more permanent to live after I move onto the base full time," Sgt. Yurigama replied in the same rehearsed tone they'd gone through a hundred times.

Mana rolled her eyes in an exaggerated fashion before focusing back on Mr. Wayne. "Sure. I can do it."

Bruce Wayne then got up, and Mana was reminded of how big he was in person. "I warn you, I can be a difficult taskmaster. I expect nothing less than excellence from all who work for me."

"I think I can handle it," Mana said confidently.

"Very well, Ms. Kirishima. Welcome to my world," at this Mr. Wayne offered his hand out, and Mana took it.

* * *

A/N: From now on, Cody MacArthur Fett (FFN user ID 1427214) will be taking over as primary writer of this 'fic. Also, big shout out to Bob Regent (FFN user ID 52257), who some of you might remember from his (in)famous Stargate/Battlestar Galactica crossover, Reunions are a Bitch, who also was the brains behind the latter half of the scene in the Batcave.


	3. Issue 3

Batgirl Beyond #3

Written by Cody MacArthur Fett

Edited by Cyclone and Bob Regent

* * *

Kirishima Mana was a soldier and a spy. She was conditioned not to look a gift horse in the mouth by both training and experience. Even so . . .

"Mr. Wayne, I have to ask, since we're going to be working together a lot in the future, why me? You could have anyone as your assistant, so why choose the girl with conflicting loyalties?"

"Well, first of all, you're not my assistant per se, more of an apprentice. Secondly, you don't have to worry about being heard in this elevator and the Batcave beneath it; it's soundproof, and we're swept for bugs every time we enter. As for the third thing, you're wrong," Bruce replied with finality.

Mana considered leaving it at that, but decided that her new boss would appreciate curiosity in her responses. "How?"

"I can't have anyone as the new Bat. There are only a few people on the planet that I can trust, and even fewer have the qualities needed to be a Bat. For instance, there was another girl I considered, the daughter of the Black Canary, but she works for Nerv," Bruce explained.

"I work for the SSDF," Mana pointed out.

"And yet you've held back information about what's going on every time you've had the chance to talk to them. I believe you see the big picture, that it's more than just Nerv, and that you would like to help. Besides, Batgirl breaking into Nerv would be a lot less suspicious than Kirishima Mana breaking in," the Wayne patriarch said as the elevator door opened.

Mana followed him, her eyes cataloging everything she saw and her brain comparing it to when she was last there. The only thing that had changed was the position of the seat. This room was clearly not used often. That changed when a panel on the wall opened to reveal a suit on a mannequin.

It was black from the bottom of its boots to the tips of the pointed fins on the top of its head, with the only change in color being the red icon of a winged chevron on its chest. It was clearly a Batsuit, but none that she had ever seen in any historical reference. Had he designed a new suit just for her? The mannequin did appear to be female . . .

"To answer your question: no, it wasn't made for you. It was just the next generation of Batsuit that I designed after Second Impact," Bruce explained.

"I thought you said you gave up superhero work after Second Impact," Mana replied as the case containing the mannequin turned around into the wall.

"First lesson as Batgirl: always be prepared for any eventuality, even the unlikely and impossible," Bruce said before taking his seat and gesturing to another part of the Batcave. "Now, your new suit is being delivered for you to try on in a dressing room off to the side."

"Thank you," Mana said with a slight bow before walking off in the direction he had pointed.

She found the suit lying in three pieces: a pair of pants integrated into boots and a heavy belt, a slightly ill fitting shirt, and finally, a full head mask. For a moment, Mana was tempted to go back and ask if this was a joke, but she decided to follow through with it. It was probably just a training suit, but everyone had to start somewhere.

Within seconds, she was stripped down to her underwear and was folding her clothes neatly in the dressing room; she'd be back for them later. Then, with that taken care of, she moved on to the Batsuit itself, picking up the pair of pants first. They felt odd in her hands, strong, but at the same time flexible. Putting them on was easy, even if they were a bit loose, with her feet fitting easily into the built-in shoes the belt hanging slightly loose. Putting on the shirt with the stylized red bat icon was equally easy, with the only problem again being that they felt slightly loose.

That all changed when she donned the mask. She let out a squeak of surprise as an electric current ran through the suit, quickly followed by the entire assemblage constricting to her body. She jumped up, and to her surprise she was able to move fluidly. If it wasn't for the digital clock in the upper right of her vision, she could have sworn that she was wearing nothing at all.

She pressed on the button to open the dressing room, and her finger went straight through the keypad. Luckily, the door still opened, but Mana was left to gape at her finger. Not only was she strong enough to smash through the keypad on accident, but she also couldn't feel a thing from the electricity sparking in the newly busted appliance.

_It must be powered armor_, Mana realized.

"_Yes, it is powered armor. Training to use it without breaking everything will be your first mission,"_ Bruce said over the intercom.

_How does he keep doing that? _The thought ran through her head

"_Because I'm very smart, now get to it," _Bruce replied

The suited-girl resolved to not show surprise, but she couldn't help but be a little freaked out. Batman, it seemed, really did know exactly what everyone was going to do before they did it. It would make spying on him an impossibility, if she wanted to, which she didn't, which he knew.

When she returned, Bruce looked inscrutably pleased. "How's the suit?" he asked.

"Powerful, in both the good and the bad ways," the cowled-girl replied.

"You'll get used to it; you'll have to. The suit acts a bit like the plugsuits the pilots at Nerv wear, with the difference being that it's now bonded to your physical form. It will adjust for growth and be a perfect fit every time," Bruce explained.

"And what if you need to use it?" Mana asked.

"I have my ways," Bruce replied ominously. "But what you should be focusing on is this," he pressed a button on his chair, and a platform raised from the floor with a orange on it. "Are you allergic to citrus?"

"No. No known allergies," Mana replied.

"Good. Eat the orange then," Bruce ordered.

Mana wondered if this was some sort of esoteric test, but quickly realized that with the impressive strength of her suit, it would be a task in and of itself. This was confirmed a few seconds later when a jet of juice came up from the mushy wreck of the orange. At least the goggles worked.

"Again," Bruce said, and another platform with an orange came up from the floor.

* * *

Five destroyed oranges later, Mana had finally gotten to the point where she could begin peeling the orange. One wrong twitch later, though, her finger was subsumed in the orange.

"Again," Bruce repeated before yet another orange came into view. Mana was seriously starting to wonder where he was getting them all.

* * *

Finally, after many destroyed oranges, Mana was eating one. It was, she decided, the best tasting piece of citrus she had ever had.

"Very good. However, it's getting late, and it's now time for dinner," Bruce said evenly, and with another press of a button, a table and set of chairs with a nearby waiter's cart came up from the floor. "Now, set the table."

Mana held her tongue on how she wanted to react.

* * *

The next day, they were finally getting down to the business of training on something besides her not destroying everything by moving around.

"Your progress has been nothing short of incredible. Estimates for how quickly the user would take to adapt to the suit were clearly greatly exaggerated. I will not make that mistake again," Bruce said as he went to fiddle with the control panel in front of an open area of the Batcave.

_I did have some extra help_, Mana admitted sadly to herself.

A trio of men popped up out of the floor, and the redhead's eyes widened before taking a defensive stance. There were three of them, all wearing different clothes, and all with different colored hats. There was one with a blue hat, one with a red hat, and one with a green hat.

"Relax," Bruce assured her, "they're only robots."

"You made life-like _robots_?!" Mana exclaimed.

"No, of course I didn't make them," Bruce said as his voice got more somber. "Superman did. He always did have a brilliant mind when it came to robotics."

Mana wasn't sure what to make of that. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. He died before you were even born, making the world safe enough that you _could_ be born. You have _nothing_ to apologize for," Bruce said in a hard voice. "These robots will be your opponents for the night. Begin!"

Mana launched herself forward, her fist raised. The faux-criminals raised their own fists to defend themselves. The battle was joined, but during the fight, claws sprung from her right fingers and gouged deeply into Green-Hat's chest.

Mana's eyes widened in shock and horror, and she felt her last meal threatening to escape from her throat. _It's only a drone. It's only a drone. It's only a drone!_ she desperately kept repeating to herself. The fist of Red-Hat plowed into her chest and knocked her down to the floor.

"Time!" Bruce yelled. The robots stopped their attack and moved away. Mana didn't move.

"What. Was. That?" Bruce asked forcefully as he advanced towards her.

"I'm sorry, sir. It won't happen again," Mana gasped weakly, preparing for the oncoming punishment.

"No, it won't, because you're going to tell me what went wrong out there. If this had been a real fight, you could have killed him, and that would have led to all sorts of problems, but this was more than that, so I'll ask again. What's wrong?" Bruce asked, his towering form now standing over the fallen girl.

Mana looked away, her demeanor full of shame. "I don't like blades," she admitted.

"You have xyrophobia," Bruce realized.

"Yes," Mana admitted again.

Bruce offered her his hand. "Come on," he said softly.

Mana turned her head, and suddenly, she realized that he wasn't mad. She gently took the offered hand and was lifted to her feet.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," Bruce said quietly. "We all have our fears, it's how we face them that defines us. . . . Come on, let's go back to the lab, and I'll modify the suit so the claws won't deploy in combat."

Mana was dumbstruck. She really didn't know how to respond, but she followed all the same. She had not anticipated this turn of events in the slightest.

* * *

"Target sighted," Mana said quietly as she scoped out the supposedly abandoned warehouse and the goons milling about it. It was a two story warehouse, with the second floor being devoted to a series of catwalks that enabled easy access to tall stacks of goods and a roof with a retractable skylight that was covered at the moment. It was built in anticipation of a new, booming economy in the 1980s, but like so many other projects in the city's long history, it had become nothing more than a haven for criminals.

"_Good, now take them out quietly, and make sure to leave their leader conscious,"_ Mr. Wayne told her through her mask's communications system.

"With my fists?" Mana asked curiously and sarcastically.

"_Or your feet. Your strength is many times greater than normal in that suit, or have you forgotten how long it took you to stop splitting watermelons?"_ Bruce quipped.

"Got it. I'm making my way towards them now," Mana replied before jumping into the air and gliding to the ground behind one of the tall stacks of crates littering the area around the warehouse. Just in front of the stack was a pair of criminals, both males, one with black hair and one with brown hair.

"I'm telling you, man, this city's getting too dangerous for people like us," the brown-haired one said morosely in Spanish of all languages.

"Who? Colombians?" the black-haired one replied back in Spanish.

"No, man, criminals. With Supergirl coming back, things are getting hot. Not only is she going around beating people up, but today, one of the cops on the take refused to go out for lunch with me. Said it would look bad if we were seen together. It's discrimination is what it is," the brown-haired one clarified.

"You do, uh, you do know what being a criminal actually means, right?" the black-haired one asked curiously.

"Yeah, man, and . . . Hold it. Gotta take a leak. I'll be back to finish this conversation in a minute," the brown-haired one said before walking away.

Mana held her breath as she watched the criminal walk in front of her. She triggered the suit's active camouflage system as quickly as she could, and before the thug had even begun turning his head, she was invisible. Luckily for her, though, he turned the other way, walking down the short path to the point where the pathway became a dead end.

It was too good an opportunity to waste. Mana kept the active camo on and crossed the distance between herself and the criminal in the time it took him to begin unzipping his pants. As soon as she was behind him, she stood up, covered his mouth with her left hand, and put him into a sleeper hold. He tried to struggle, but the suit's powered endoskeleton made sure that she never lost her grip. Within seconds, he was unconscious.

"_Good first takedown; now, get his friend,"_ Bruce congratulated.

Mana nodded and was about to turn around when she heard another voice call out in Japanese.

"Hey, Carlos! You and your buddy better come inside; the boss is doing a meeting!"

"No problem! We'll be right over!" the black-haired man called back in Japanese before turning his attention back to his friend in Spanish. "Hey man, did you get all that?"

No answer came, and Mana had gone and sucked herself up against the wall while praying that the active camouflage held.

"Hey, man, I'm coming around the corner, and I swear I better not find you with your pants around your ankles while jerking off to_ Publisher's Weekly_ again; it's weird," the man said before walking around the corner and finding his friend unconscious in a heap. "What the . . ."

Mana's hand swiftly came down in a chop to the back of his head, and the thug dropped to the ground with a quiet crunch. She then proceeded to drag them to the back of the path before launching herself onto the top of the crates with an augmented hop. It looked like there was no one outside, and a quick switch through the suit's various vision modes confirmed that they were all gathered in the warehouse. Sloppy, but it wasn't until recently that they had to care about retribution.

Mana fell to the ground with a thud and began running towards the building. As soon as she reached the wall, she did another sensor check. She confirmed the all clear, and then aimed her wrist up at the roof. One specific flexing of her hand later, and a hook shot out of the suit, trailing an impossibly thin and impossibly strong cord. For a brief moment, she wondered if Wayne's techno-wizardry had failed, and then, she felt the tell-tale gentle tug of the grappling hook finding purchase. A split second after that, she was rocketing through the air before landing on the roof of the warehouse with a roll.

"I wish I had taken the old grapple hook," Mana moaned quietly, breathing slightly heavier than she was before as she crouched on the roof.

"_Too heavy; now, get back to work; scans show you've got twelve criminals down there that you've got to subdue and gift wrap for the cops,"_ Mr. Wayne reported.

_They'll be out within a week_, Mana cursed to herself. She didn't understand why Mr. Wayne insisted on working with the corrupt Tokyo-3 Police Department, but it wasn't her place to question that openly. She had her orders, and now, she only had to follow them. Knock out the criminals, no casualties. _Easier said than done with this suit on,_ she thought.

With little effort, she got up and walked over to the door to the warehouse's second floor. A quick scan with her electromagnetic field vision confirmed that there were no electronic alarms, and a scan with her x-ray vision confirmed the same for analogue alarms. Now all that was left was to open the door.

Thanks to the pocket screwdriver stored in her utility pouch, it took less than a minute for her to disassemble the door knob and open the door. With that done, she merely walked down the stairs. Her footfalls were so quiet that she was almost afraid the lack of sound would give her away. Her irrational fears aside, though, she was quickly able to get down onto the catwalks and begin listening to the thugs' conversation.

"Looks like they're not coming," the criminal with the name tag reading Stroka said.

"Eh, let 'em be. They'll be sleeping with the fishes tomorrow," another replied.

"Please tell me that's a euphemism, boss," asked the one with shirt that said Kimuni.

"It ain't."

Moving her view away from the disgusted looking criminals Mana turned on her EMF vision and searched for the point where all the wires in the building converged. After finding it, she began her walk towards it, all the while the goons kept on talking.

"OK, so here's the deal, we're going to go and shakedown the Tokyo-3 Aquarium, see? And we're going to do it tomorrow night, ya dig?"

"Yeah, boss."

"Of course."

"Good, now here's how we're going to do it. Gareth's going to get the harpoon and hold up the front desk, while Koji goes and enters in the combination to the safe . . . Yes? What is it?"

"When you say 'harpoon' do you mean the spear or the missile?"

"The spear! What kind of mook names a missile 'the harpoon'?!"

"The US Navy."

"The US Navy are a bunch of has-beens that can't afford to keep the lights on."

As soon as the leader finished his sentence, the warehouse was plunged into darkness.

"Oh come on! Genji, go and get the torches! I ain't trying to fix this old building tonight, and I ain't stumbling around in the dark trying to complete this meeting."

"Sure thing, boss," Genji replied before getting up and walking over to the bags they had stowed near the table.

"Now, then, as I was saying . . ."

"Uh, boss, Genji's gone," one of the mooks said with a point of the finger to where a lit flashlight now lay on the ground.

"What in the world?"

"Guys, help! Get me down from here!" Genji's voice cried from above them.

One of the other mooks rushed over and grabbed the flashlight before pointing it up towards the ceiling to find Genji dangling three meters above the ground.

"How did you get up there?" the man holding the flashlight asked.

"Some oni came out of nowhere and . . . and I don't feel so good," Genji yelled back as he swayed back and forth, growing redder by the second.

Suddenly, a small black shape cut the wire holding Genji up, and the man plummeted to the ground. The man holding the flashlight had just enough time to gasp out in surprise before he and Genji collided. The two criminals fell to the ground in a tangled heap, both unconscious.

"Holy smokes! Did you see that?!"

"Everyone just calm down, and grab a gun and torch!" the leader yelled. "Someone did this to them, and if they're using rope, then they're just a man, and if they're a man, we can kill 'em! Now, come on!"

All the thugs that had been sitting around the the table moved to do so. Their leader was right, they reasoned, it must have just been a man. The leader and three others drew G36 assault rifles with flashlight attachments, while the remaining seven opted to just hold Makarov pistols and flashlights with both hands.

"Spread out! Search for him!" the leader called out, the minions following to do just that.

Ten lances of light from the flashlights burned away the darkness, bathing large sections of the warehouse with illumination. Even still, though, the boxes and crates in the warehouse allowed much of the facility to remain cloaked in darkness. They knew what they had to do, and so they spread out one by one, each going to a different area of the warehouse.

For several minutes, they searched, but found nothing. They were about to give up when one of the beams from the flashlights suddenly swung towards the ceiling before clattering to the ground. One of the minions was about to check it out when an ear piercing cry of terror from the opposite side of the warehouse shattered the relative silence. His eyes widened, and he began running towards where the sound came from. When he got there, he found everyone else, and the leader checking the pulse of one of their own.

"He's still alive. Come on! Let's find this guy! Spread out again! In pairs this time!" the leader yelled, and once again, the group of eight spread across the warehouse.

"First the alien chick and now a ninja. Going independant ain't all it's cracked up to be," Stroka said quietly to his partner.

"Yeah, I wonder if Intergang is hiring," Kinumi replied.

"Intergang? You really think that's smart?"

"No, but what choice do we have?"

Less than three minutes after they spread out, a wet crack sounded out through warehouse, and fifteen seconds after, they all turned to run to where it came from another flashlight went towards the ceiling. Then shots rang out. The cracking report of an automatic rifle sounded out twenty times, and then ran silent.

"Hey, did you get 'em, Yuki?" the leader asked his minion as he ran onto the scene to find him reloading.

"No! I mean . . . maybe," the minion stammered. "I think Genji was right. I think it was an oni."

"Come on, Yuki, you don't really believe that stuff, do you?" the leader asked reassuringly.

"Look, boss, all I know is that I turned around and saw Chris being choked by something. Something that wasn't entirely there. I tried shooting at it, but it disappeared into the dark before I could get a bead on it. If it ain't an oni, then we're being stalked by something with far more tech than us," the minion explained.

The leader seemed to be thinking for a moment before he responded. "Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. Stick with me and Toji, and we'll all move up to the catwalks."

"Where is he?' the minion asked.

The leader turned around to find that the person he had been with was now gone.

"Hey, I think Ryoji is gone too!"

"Yeah, I can't see him, and his flashlight is just laying on that crate!"

"Up to the catwalks!" the leader suddenly yelled, causing the criminals to dash towards the stairway less than a hundred feet away from them.

Less than fifty feet away, a cloud of green smoke appeared in front of the two in back. They hacked and coughed and quickly fell to the ground. The minion who had shot at the stalker almost spared a glance back.

"Don't stop running!" the leader yelled. "We're hitting the roof!"

What had started as fourteen was down to two, and the sole remaining pair of criminals was well aware of the fate that possibly awaited them. So they ran. They ran as fast as their terrified hearts could manage. It almost looked like they would escape. Upon reaching the second floor catwalks, though, disaster struck.

A grappling hook shot out of the darkness and wrapped itself around the minion's ankle. He screamed and was yanked to the catwalk before being dragged across it towards the edge. Luckily, he caught one of the railing spindles just in time to avoid being dragged off completely.

"Yuki!" the leader called out, rushing back around to help him.

"Boss! I can't hold on!" Yuki screamed.

"Don't worry, Yuki! I got ya!" the boss yelled, reaching out to grab the minion's wrist.

"No, boss! It's . . ." the minion never got the chance to finish as his grip failed, and he was yanked screaming into the abyss.

In that moment, something in the leader's mind snapped. He grabbed hold of his rifle and ran, screaming and firing blindly behind him the whole way up. He didn't stop until he reached the roof, and even then, only briefly.

His terror-stricken mind raced as he tried to remember where the fire escape was. His head darted around, finally finding what looked like the top of stairs on the other side. He was less than a quarter of the way there before he heard the tell-tale sound of a rocket beneath him.

The leader turned around just in time to see part of the cover on the skylight explode, wood and glass flying everywhere as a black shape riding a column of fire shot out from inside the warehouse. The shape landed in front of the leader with a heavy thud, and he felt his heart freeze as his hands went limp, and the rifle fell from his hands. Sounds and images from his childhood flooded back to him: afternoons spent playing with friends, nights watching the news, the moment he first decided to be a criminal, and one specific image he'd seen a hundred times before.

"N-n-n-no. Not you. Not you. You're dead! You died in Second Impact. Everyone was sure of it! Batman's dead!" the leader ranted, falling to the ground in terror and scrambling back as far as he could.

"I was reborn," a strange feminine voice that sounded like it had crawled from the deepest pit of hell said from the bat's mouth. "I came back just to bring down criminal scum like you."

"Mercy! Please!" the leader begged, on his hands and knees now.

"Where's the leader of Intergang in this city?!" the bat growled as it reached down and grabbed the leader's clothes in its talons before lifting him up with unnatural strength.

"I don't know!" the leader pleaded. "I'm independent! I've only met twice with Intergang reps, and that was strictly for sales and clearance. _No one_ does anything in this city without talking to Intergang."

"Good, then you have the chance to stop before you meet me again," the bat sneered before hitting the leader in the head hard enough to knock him out.

* * *

Cody's A/N: The sequence with Mana's first predator mission marks the end of the pre-rendered content for this story, it having been written by me at least a year or two ago. From here on out it'll be content that's specifically produced for that chapter. It'll be quite the crunch.

* * *

This week has given us two mook horror shows and a bit of character development. Next week will see the return of the Angels and the start of two new stories. So tune in next Sunday to see the marvelous future continue to develop for our true blue heroines.


	4. Issue 4

_Batgirl Beyond_ #4

Written by Cody Fett

Edited by Bob Regent and Cyclone

* * *

"You had a Batcave built into Tokyo-3 during the reconstruction eight years ago? You really _are_ paranoid."

Bruce swiveled his chair around in his chair to face the speaker. "Two things, Diana. First of all, you already knew I was paranoid from the time you caught me wearing a wire on our first date. Second of all, how do you know that I built this eight years ago?"

Diana shrugged as she walked away from the elevator. "It was the most likely possibility. You were in Tokyo-3 during that time period, and with all the construction going on, it would have been child's play for you to hide your own building during that time."

"Not bad," Bruce replied nodding at her reasoning as he went back to work.

"So what's going on in the wide world of the semi-retired Bruce Wayne?" Diana asked as she stepped up behind Bruce's chair and put her hand on the back.

"I'm scheduling a meeting with the hospital where the Intergang members from that raid Supergirl did earlier tonight are being kept to set up a recovery and rehabilitation program," Bruce answered gruffly.

"Helping criminals, Bruce? That's so unlike you," Diana replied with a grin.

"You clearly don't know me that well," Bruce shot back. "Besides, it's something Clark would have done, and since this new Supergirl seems dead set on being a loose cannon cape on the edge who doesn't play by the rules, it falls to me to honor my friend's legacy."

Diana got quiet at that. "Yeah. . . . Sorry I won't be able to come along and back you up. I've got a training session scheduled in a few hours with the pilots. I'm thinking of a way to shorten it up though. There's a ton of paperwork I have to get through today."

"Don't worry. You go and feed the ever growing bureaucracy, I've already got someone else to go with me."

"Someone else?! Who?"

* * *

"Kirishima Mana and Bruce Wayne?" the receptionist at the hospital asked.

"That's us," Mana answered evenly.

"Good, you've been expected. Here are your wristbands. Make sure they're visible at all times while visiting."

Mana and Bruce took the offered wristbands and put them on before moving out of the reception area of the hospital, Mana following a respectable distance behind Bruce on his right side.

"Aren't you going to ask why we're here?" Bruce asked as they moved towards the offices.

"I assumed you were going to explain it eventually, sir," Mana replied.

Bruce hmpf-ed. "You shouldn't expect people to do that. They might just be waiting for people to ask."

"I'll remember that, sir," the red-headed girl confirmed.

Their conversation was interrupted by a man in a white lab coat marked with a medical cross rushing towards them with a very 'used car salesman' smile .

"Mr. Wayne! My name is Doctor Shinyo, the head doctor at this facility," the man, Dr. Shinyo, said excitedly, reaching his hand out as he reached the pair.

Bruce extended his own hand and shook the doctor's offered one firmly. "Greetings, Doctor. Glad to be here."

The doctor retracted his hand, but retained the fake feeling smile. "And we are glad to have you, Mr. Wayne."

"Quite. Well, if you don't mind, I'm going to get down to business," Bruce replied with a professional tone. "I'm here to personally confirm that Wayne Enterprises will cover all the medical expenses of those arrested last night in the raid by Supergirl and the T3PD."

"We are very grateful for your donation, Mr. Wayne, but . . . why? They are criminals," Dr. Shinyo questioned.

"Maybe, but I believe they don't have to be. Thirty years ago, Gotham was just as crime ridden as Tokyo-3 is, but now, it's one of the safest cities in America. I intend to apply those same techniques to Tokyo-3 to clean it up, and it starts with the criminals knowing that they have other options and don't _have_ to choose their current path," Bruce punctuated his statement by stamping his cane onto the floor with a sharp crack.

"Besides," he continued. "I won't give you the money if you don't use it for what I've ear marked it for."

The doctor blushed, but nodded in understanding all the same.

"Good. Now, my lawyer should be here any minute. Why don't you prepare the bill, and we'll go from there?"

* * *

"You're wondering why I'm doing this?" Bruce asked they sat in the back seating area of his limo on their way to the police station.

"Yes, sir. It doesn't seem logical," Mana admitted.

"Maybe not, but we can't just kill them. We need a more long term solution," Bruce replied.

"Giving them jobs is that solution?" Mana asked.

"Part of it. It's basic economic sense. If someone has a well-paying job then they'll have less financial motivation to commit crime, and less time to commit such crimes should they find the motivation," Bruce explained.

"And if they just enjoy it?" Mana asked.

"Then those people will be thrown in the klink pretty fast thanks to Batgirl, the stick to my carrot," Bruce replied with a smirk.

"I see," the redhead stated.

They felt the limo stop, and Mana moved to open the door before Bruce could. She succeeded, of course. Youth and flexibility won out yet again.

"You know, it's traditional for the gentleman to hold open the door for the lady," Bruce said raising an eyebrow.

"Maybe, but I get paid to do this sort of stuff," Mana quipped.

They were at the central headquarters of the Tokyo-3 Police Department, and as they walked up the steps, Mana couldn't help but be struck by how old it was. From the cracks and weathering, she was looking at 80 years of history at the very least. Which made sense, in her estimation, given that the current T3PD HQ had apparently been a military command center during the Pacific War.

_From one war to the next_, Mana thought. "I'm surprised they didn't move into one of the new buildings on the other side of the mountain."

"You and the people who work here, but they were denied a part of the reconstruction by the city council. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that they were on Intergang's take," Bruce said with the tone that Mana was coming to recognize as his cold anger.

As they entered the door to the station they were greeted by Commissioner Margaret Sawyer and Chief Prosecutor Hibiki Kisho. Commissioner Sawyer looked like she had been mainlining nothing but coffee for the last day, but it did nothing to distract from the stern professionalism of the woman. Prosecutor Hibiki, in contrast, seemed to look like he was above it all and disdainful of anyone trying to bring him back down to Earth, a slightly different form of the stereotypical prosecutor arrogance that plagued the Japanese justice system.

"Hello, Commissioner, Prosecutor," Bruce greeted them.

"Mr. Wayne, how good of you to join us," Hibiki said evenly.

"Why don't we head into the conference room to discuss this matter further," Commissioner Sawyer suggested with a gesture.

"Very well, then. Come along, Mana, and have your notebook out," Bruce said as he started to follow the pair. At Hibiki's raised eyebrow he explained, "My assistant."

* * *

"Help for these criminal scum? Absolutely not," Sawyer said with finality.

"Don't think of it as helping the criminals, Commissioner. Think of it as preventing a future problem," Bruce said with a hint of compassion in his voice. "We need to give these people an out other than Intergang."

"A brilliant observation, but in case you haven't noticed, the city doesn't have the resources to rehabilitate its streets, never mind the criminals," Sawyer reported.

"Wayne Enterprises . . ."

". . . Can pay for it. Yeah, I've heard that before, and not even you're rich enough to be everywhere, Mr. Wayne," Sawyer retorted.

"I think we should go with Mr. Wayne's advice," Hibiki said suddenly.

"You finally speak up to say that?" Sawyer exclaimed.

"Yes. We may not have the facilities, but there are several rehabilitative prisons elsewhere in the country. We can transfer them there," Hibiki clarified evenly.

"Thank you, Prosecutor," Bruce replied with a smile.

"You're welcome, Mr. Wayne. We thank you for your suggestions," Hikari replied.

Sawyer sighed and rubbed her face with her palms. "Fine. I've got to get some sleep, I'm starting to hear and speak crazy."

* * *

"Thoughts?" Bruce asked when they were back in the limo.

"Sawyer is abrasive, but she's the one to cozy up to in the long term. Hibiki might be aligned with you right now, but he's been flagged for possible corruption by the SSDF, and after seeing him in person, I'd have to agree. There's no way Intergang would have gotten this far if he was actually doing his job," Mana answered succinctly.

"I concur," Bruce agreed

"Having doubts?" Mana asked.

"No, but the plan will require some adjustments. Remember, it's not whether or not your plan survives contact with the enemy that matters. It's . . ."

". . . How you adapt when it inevitably goes wrong," the red-head finished.

Bruce nodded, and looked out the window. "There's going to be a lot of that going on in the coming months."

* * *

Mana groaned as she finished washing up in the Batcave's private shower. The bruises on her body were starting to fade, but that didn't stop the residual aches and pains. She wasn't sure how that stuff Mr. Wayne gave her worked, but she supposed that it made sense he'd have something like that, given that he _had_ been Batman for fifteen years.

_Still_, she reflected as she finished putting on her underwear and started putting on her sweat clothes, _I wish he'd tell me about this stuff before I need it._

It was an inevitable part of putting on the costume, she supposed. Missed school days, bruised bodies, sleepless nights, and strange tonics being rubbed into her body to prevent the effects thereof. She didn't even know why she was doing this to begin with. . . .

Mana's eyes widened as she heard an alarm go off on the Batcomputer. She finished tying up her sneakers and ran towards it at a good clip. Her training prevented her from panicking when she saw what the alert was about.

Tokyo-3 was being attacked by an Angel, and the evacuation alarm had been sounded.

She ran towards the elevator to Wayne Tower and hit the activation button/thumb scanner. As the elevator went up, she cursed its slow speed, but kept herself from acting out. She saved that for when she reached the ground floor and dashed out as fast as she could.

"Mr. Wayne!" Mana called out when she saw the tall man moving through the crowd of employees moving out of the building quickly and in good order.

"Mana! I thought you would have been at school by now," Bruce said as Mana took up her position besides him.

"I was still freshening up, sir. Besides, I do believe that school has been cancelled for the day," she quipped.

* * *

They entered the catacombs through the subway entrances, the ramps and stairs providing easy access to the hidden world ten meters beneath the ground without having to climb up and down a long shaft. It was crowded, but the dynamic duo managed to stay together, walking at a brisk pace deeper into the catacombs. Eventually, they reached the sewers, the main thoroughfare through the underground, and stopped to rest. There were thousands of other Wayne Enterprises employees and other citizens moving to and fro throughout the open channel.

"What do we do now?" Mana asked, tucking her hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt as she did so.

"Now? Now, we give you the grand tour," Bruce said with a gesture to the space around them.

"A tour?" Mana asked incredulously.

"Indeed, a tour," Bruce replied with a barely there smirk as he began walking along. "Look around you, what do you see?"

Mana made a show of moving her head before replying. "Fear. A whole city crammed into spaces too small for normal movement above an open sewer."

"And yet, everyone seems to be adapting," Bruce said, pointing out how the faces of the people around them had lightened up since the first time an Angel had attacked. "Now, is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

"Both," Mana answered. "It means they'll be able to operate better under stress, but it also means that they've grown accustomed to living in fear. That's . . . that's not right."

"No, it isn't," Bruce agreed. "Still, keep your eye on this level of the city and the other sub-levels in the coming months to see how they develop.

"Like this!" the dark-haired man declared with a gesture to the food cart they were approaching.

Mana hid her surprise at the skin tone of the man carefully. Because while dark skin was rare enough in Japan that the last time she had personally seen anyone with it was when she had been in Africa, she also knew that Tokyo-3 was a multicultural city and that the number of people of African descent was significantly larger than most Japanese settlements. Besides, she had red hair; she had very little right to comment on someone looking strange without being a hypocrite.

"Ah! Hello to you, sir. Can I get you anything?" the man behind the cart asked in English, genuinely surprising Mana with a heavy Brooklyn accent.

"One hot dog with relish for me, and one with ketchup for the young lady," Bruce replied happily. "Also, if you don't mind me asking, how did you get this down here?"

"Cargo elevator about ten meters that way," the man replied with a gesture as he got their order together. "It was broken, but I used to work on them back in the Czech Republic, so I got it working again."

"The Czech Republic?" Mana asked curiously.

"Yep! Prague born and raised," the man declared with a smile, missing the brief flash of confusion across Mana's face. "It's calmed down a lot since the days of Brod and his cronies, but it still taught me a lot of about living crime. Look to the good ones, and your world will be a little brighter, that's what my ma always said."

Mana couldn't help but smile a little at that. She had been told growing up that people from Africa and the descendents thereof where all lazy degenerates, but she always suspected that the information she had been provided with was false in the same way that one might admit that they have no proof on hand but that their gut told them a conclusion was wrong. It was good to now have a little bit of proof on her side.

"Here you go, one dog with relish for the gentleman, and one with ketchup for the lady," the man said as he presented them with their orders.

As Bruce was paying him, Mana bit into her own meal. It was good! Really good! She wondered if all hot dogs were like this, or just this stand. It certainly would do well to test that out in between the Bat nutrient shakes that Mr. Wayne had her on.

* * *

There was a series of heavy thumps overhead, and Mana unconsciously looked up.

"Pretty impressive, isn't it?" Bruce asked. "The GeoFront has twenty-two armor belts protecting it, but the rest of Tokyo-3 isn't without protection."

"It's mostly just concrete though," Mana said softly. "It won't be surviving an orbital strike any time soon."

"Maybe not, but it will stop an Eva's foot from wrecking the street," Bruce pointed out. "That's quite an accomplishment in and of itself."

"So what happens if an Angel decides to smash through here?" Mana inquired with a hint of outrage. "It's not like seventy year old armor belts will stop that."

"True. I suppose we should be thankful then that the Angels seem as focused on Nerv as we are," Bruce mused.

"There's something else going on up there," Mana realized. "A lot of those sounds and vibrations aren't the sort of things you hear on a battlefield."

"Any ideas on what's going on?" Bruce asked sagely.

Mana thought about that before answering. "The Shriek wasn't using his own tech, and a recently kidnapped scientist named Walter Shreeve was a sonic engineer. It's possible that he wasn't kidnapped at all, but rather defected to Intergang. Now he's back to prove that his inventions work by defeating Supergirl in a very public way in front of Nerv."

"An interesting theory," Bruce said with a raised eyebrow.

"Thanks, I got it from reading over some of the old mission files," Mana replied with obvious false cheer.

* * *

Later on that night, Mana had a slight smile plastered to her face as she got ready for bed. She had been right, even if the answer was rather obvious. She only hoped that she would be able to apply that intuition to catching a criminal in the act.

Her smile dropped from her face at that thought. She should be focusing on getting into Nerv, even if a way wasn't readily available. The criminal scum of this city would ultimately be wiped out, but the Nerv mission was time sensitive. At least, that's what Sgt. Yurigama would tell her.

As she looked around the empty house, though, she realized that she wasn't there. For the first time since she could remember, she was alone. Her mind was filled with equal amounts of fear and relief at that. She was alone.

As she struggled to go to sleep that night, it was a thought that kept coming back to her in a dozen different connotations.

* * *

Cody's A/N: Not a lot happened this chapter, but at the same time I suppose it's good to see the characters as they are without the cape in their regular lives. If nothing else, it can get the snowball rolling on stuff for later. After all, the cape is just a job, right?

General A/N: This week marks the last time simultaneous updates will be given. At least one update a week will still be given out, or we'll try to at least, but our team needs to have time to do other things. Four (soon to be five, and then six, and then seven) updates a week is just crazy as far as a schedule goes.


End file.
